Web pages are often not properly formatted for presentation on every device on which they are to be displayed. In many cases, when displayed on the monitor of a desktop device, or even of a laptop, portions of the web page lie outside the image area of the display. A user must then scroll down or scroll right to view the masked images. Depending on the particular display device, scrolling can be required for each web page accessed. Alternatively, in some cases users may set the display settings to that which is most suitable for the display device connected, to thereby cause the entire image of a particular web page to fit within the display window of the client device. Such settings, however, will effect the display of every image presented to the user in every application employed at the client device, and often cause images to be distorted to such a degree that they become undesirable. Moreover, as images associated with different web pages may vary, selecting the display settings for one web page may not compensate for problems associated with the receipt of web pages of different sizes. As a result, web designers may be forced to manually format and store a different image for each different display device.
While display of web pages on desktop devices can cause inconvenience, the display of such pages in mobile applications can be extremely difficult. Mobile devices are often equipped with small screens having limited display capabilities. Screen size, available memory, processing speeds, and other factors may place limits on the capabilities of a given display. Because an application designer may choose to sacrifice certain of the display capabilities in favor of other capabilities, the variations in capabilities among mobile devices are great.
Accordingly, web developers may design a different web page for mobile applications than those requested by devices having enhanced display capabilities. Even where web pages are designed for mobile applications, because the display capabilities of mobile device vary greatly, the images of a single web page may not display satisfactorily on each different type of device. For example, while one mobile device may be configured to display images in GIF formatting, others may require JPEG compatibility, WBMP (wireless bitmapping), PNG (portable networks graphics), or other formatting standards. Each model of portable device may have different display capabilities, ranging from high resolution, relatively large size, color displays to those that can only display low resolution black and white images within an extremely limited display area. Even devices possessing similar capabilities may differ sufficiently such that an image designed for display on one device is distorted when displayed on the other.
Currently, web designers building web sites for display on a variety of devices, or other devices having less sophisticated displays, are often required to either store a single image for display on every type of display device, regardless of the compatibility of the image, or to store different images depending on the particular device requesting the web page for each image within the page. In the latter case, the web designer must select and/or modify a different version of a source image to generate a sufficient number of images for display on every client device.
FIG. 1 illustrates a conventional server 1 with a processor 4 and a memory 5. Memory 5 may include an image memory 6 for storing image files to be transmitted and displayed on a client device. Memory 5 may also store web applications and other forms of programming and/or data. As shown in FIG. 1, images I1-IM corresponding to component images of a single web page, are each stored in the memory 5 of the server 1. Server may receive a request from one or more client devices operating a browser or the like, the client devices, 10A-10N, may include a camera 10A with a display 11A, a personal data assistant 10B with a display 11B, a wireless telephone 10C with a display 11C, a flip-top cellular telephone 10D with a display 11D, a desk-top computer 10E with a display 11E, a lap-top 10N with a display 11N, or any such computing device with a display that may request the web page. Because the images may not be suitable for presentation on each type of device or each device with differing imaging characteristics, multiple versions of the same image, I1A-I1N, for example, may be stored for transmission to each different type of client device. For example, each client devices 10A-10N requesting the web page may include a display 11A-11N with different capabilities or requiring different image processing for preparing images and converting the images into a form suitable for display. The large number of images stored for retrieval may consume a great deal of memory resources. Moreover, a different set of images must be stored for both mobile devices having less sophisticated displays as well as for those client devices having substantially greater display capabilities, such as desktop monitors and the like.
Moreover, current systems are inflexible. Unless the web page designer is able to anticipate the display capabilities of each new client device to come to market, the designer must update the list of available images with additional images, IM+1 for example, meeting the formats and/or other display characteristics of the latest devices. Additionally, when changes are made to images and/or the web page, including the wholesale replacement of the image, such changes must be made to each version of the image affected, I1A-I1N. Because a user may not know how many images selected for incorporation into a web page will fit within the display area of any given client device, the user may choose to conservatively estimate the lowest number of images capable of display, excluding images from the web site that might fit within the display area of some or all client devices.
Accordingly, an improved method and system is required for generating images of a web site. Thus, there is a need in the art for an improved method for developing a web page with images suitable for display on any device. In addition, there is a need in the art for a method for generating images that properly fit the image area of the display used by the client device. There is also a need in the art for a method of generating images that are composed of image data that is suitable for display on the client device consistent with the formatting and display capabilities of that device. A method is also needed for enabling a user to designate with certainty the images that are to be displayed at the client device.